Essential Charts

All charts provided here are to be used as an entry-point into a genre, allowing you to gain a basic understanding of what a genre could have to offer. It is recommended that you explore genres on your own after having listened through some of the recommended music. Help with exploring music can be found at the Discovering Music page.
Do not treat the /mu/ essential chart as a "required listening for /mu/ chart." It doesn't matter if you have or haven't listened to the albums on the chart at all. The only reason it has been added to this wiki is for archival purposes and ease of access for everyone. If you come to /mu/ and listen to a lot of albums that happen to be on the /mu/ essentials chart, everyone will call you a "/mu/drone" and hate you, because a lot of people on /mu/ seem to think that the /mu/ essentials is a list of albums that only /mu/ likes, and is not a list of some of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time that a lot of people like outside of /mu/. Remember that being your own special little snowflake is an encouraged behaviour, and you should show this by flaunting your chart and last.fm in peoples faces, filled with music by obscure EAI, Onkyokei and field recording artists from countries that you can't even pronounce.